Obama admin: By the way, we’re going to need insurers to pay to use our exchanges

posted at 5:01 pm on December 2, 2012 by Erika Johnsen

I thought ObamaCare was going to be so awesomely efficient and innovative, and know how to accomplish things so much better than the free market, that all of the associated health care costs were going to go down, insurance was going to get more affordable, and none of this was going to have any adverse effects on the middle class, or something? Via the NYT:

The Obama administration said Friday that it would charge insurance companies for the privilege of selling health insurance to millions of Americans in new online markets run by the federal government.

The cost of these “user fees” can be passed on to consumers. The proposed fees could add 3.5 percent to premiums for private health plans sold in insurance exchanges operated by the federal government.

In proposing the new rule, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said that fees charged by the federal government would be “sufficient to cover the majority of costs related to the operation of federally facilitated exchanges.” She did not say how the remainder of the money would be raised. …

Fees charged for use of the federal exchange come on top of a separate annual fee to be imposed on health insurance companies to help offset the cost of expanding coverage under the new law. The annual fees, to be apportioned among insurers according to their shares of the nation’s health insurance market, are expected to total $6 billion in 2014 and more than $100 billion over 10 years.

Just getting these supposedly fabulous online insurance marketplaces set up is already turning into an unmitigated disaster — what on earth is going to happen when we finally get down to the business of actually insuring and caring for people? Rolling this thing out, the Obama administration is looking like a bunch of chickens running around with their heads cut off, and their unpreparedness in dealing with their own Frankenstein’s monster is showcasing all of the new costs and consequences coming with it.

The delusion that ObamaCare is going to do anything except turn our entire health care system into much more of an expensive, inefficient, bureaucratic nightmare than it already is, is quickly wearing thin — and we’ve barely even gotten started.

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Unfortunately, too many Americans do not understand what is about to happen to them, especially the Obama voters. They just think they are getting free high-quality health care and sticking it to those eeeeevil rich people.

Have fun being on Medicaid. If you don’t want that garbage insurance (which few doctors accept), enjoy paying the monthly bill for your annual costs and redeeming your credits, if any, at tax time. Especially if you have always had insurance from your employer for which you paid a fraction of the costs. And now you pay for a full-coverage family policy out of pocket because it is much, much cheaper for your employer to pay the fine for dropping coverage.

And when the program starts going broke in the first year, have even more fun when subsidies are slashed. Medicare patients, best of luck to you as well. You’ll need it to find a doctor who accepts your insurance (because it pretty much is Medicaid). You’ll have time to adjust, though: The government is reducing Medicare reimbursements to doctors by 27 percent this year, so you may lose your doctor before the nightmare officially starts in 2014.

All of this happens, of course, after millions of Americans have their weekly work hours cut to 29.5 in 2013 so their employer will not have to pay a fine for failing to provide insurance to full-time employees. We’ll be a nation of part-time employees! More me time, how nice.

No wonder the monthly unemployment numbers now count part-time employees. This is all going to Barky’s socialist plan.

Private insurance protects us from single payer. So, the first step is to get rid of private insurance. Then we’re in single payer. Then the government reduces the incomes of the doctors. Then the doctors leave the profession. Then a bunch dimwits get to go to med school since the smartest people, who used to go med school, have become plumbers. Then your cardiac bypass and knee replacement surgeries are performed by dimwits. Not to mention the dimwits who will now be your anesthesiologists.

Only to the people that care and not enough of them showed up to vote on election day. The low information voter that populates the left coasts couldn’t be distracted enough from their Jersey Shore show to get educated about important issues like this. I’m looking forward to the end of free stuff and them scrambling to learn how to be self sufficient.

Bloomberg Article Warns that Health Care Coverage May Not be Affordable
Posted on November 30, 2012 by AHIP Coverage

An article in Bloomberg examines the affordability of health care coverage as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is implemented. While the ACA will help many uninsured Americans get coverage for the first time, the article warns that the new coverage may “come at a potentially unaffordable cost.”

AHIP has been focused on raising awareness of factors driving premium increases, including soaring medical costs and provisions in the ACA, such as the new health insurance tax, costly benefit requirements, and age rating restrictions, which will significantly add to the cost of coverage. To learn more, visit http://www.AHIP.org/affordability.

Here are some key highlights from the Bloomberg article:

As the administration spells out the details, many uninsured will be surprised at how much they will have to pay. It may involve “very substantial amounts,” and “there still will be a significant number of people who can’t afford health coverage,” said Ron Pollack, head of Families USA, a consumer group that backs the law.

“People are often surprised at how expensive health insurance is once they have to pay for their own,” said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at Kaiser Family Foundation. “The subsidies will make that better, but they won’t make the cost disappear.”

“While we’re only dimly aware of it, we all pay,” said former Congressional Budget Office Director Robert Reischauer. “There shouldn’t be free-riders.”

“What’s more, there are provisions in the law capping the financial burden the requirements will impose on the uninsured. If costs exceed 8 percent of their income, they are exempt from the individual mandate to buy insurance. And people can choose to pay a penalty instead of buying insurance. The fine would be $695, or 2.5 percent of a person’s income, whichever is greater.”

“In 2019, some families could see their premiums climb four times as quickly as the help they receive from the government, according to CBO. That means they will have to bear a larger share of the burden of purchasing coverage.”

“That will be a major challenge,” said John McDonough, a public-health professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. “It makes the affordability picture far worse.”

“A November 2009 analysis by CBO of a draft of the program provides a rough indication of how quickly the subsidies will ramp down. It shows the government covering 77 percent of the premium costs for single persons earning about $20,600, 42 percent for those earning around $32,400 and 13 percent of the premium costs for those making about $44,200.
That means many with modest incomes will be responsible for covering the bulk of their premium costs. About 5 million people required to buy coverage won’t receive any help from the government because they earn too much, CBO projects.”

“There may not be sufficient management of expectations,” said Lynn Quincy, a health-policy analyst at Consumers Union, a Yonkers, New York-based advocacy group. Lawmakers should have been telling the public the law promises “lower-cost” — not “affordable” — coverage, she said. “Everybody interprets ‘affordable’ differently — it’s in the eye of the beholder.”

The Obama administration said Friday that it would charge insurance companies for the privilege of selling health insurance to millions of Americans in new online markets run by the federal government.

A privilege for the highest bidders (campaign donors) I’m sure.

I’d really have a good time with this if I thought it wasn’t going to affect myself and millions of others who knew better.

Hope for Texas and some other states. See what people missed by not having a President with ballz:

Texas governor and former GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry sent a rejection letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today saying Texas will not be implementing ObamaCare in its entirety.

Texas will not expand Medicaid or establish a health insurance exchange, two major tenets of the federal health reform that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld last month, Gov. Rick Perry said in an early morning announcement.

“I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the Obamacare power grab,” he said in a statement. “Neither a ‘state’ exchange nor the expansion of Medicaid under this program would result in better ‘patient protection’ or in more ‘affordable care.’ They would only make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care.
“If anyone was in doubt, we in Texas have no intention to implement so-called state exchanges or to expand Medicaid under Obamacare,” Perry said in a statement. “I will not be party to socializing healthcare and bankrupting my state in direct contradiction to our Constitution and our founding principles of limited government.”

As governor, Perry took on healthcare reform through tort reform by reducing frivolous lawsuits in the state and decreased some of the costs of heathcare by implementing a “loser pay all” system…..”

If he hadn’t had the debate debacle – I swear we would be celebrating President elect Perry right now.

UGH!

gophergirl on December 2, 2012 at 8:02 PM

Yeah.
Back surgery w/n weeks of the first debate and the pain meds took its toll. By the time he’d recovered, the RINO’s at Fox (esp. Cavuto) had written him off even when he gave a strong 3rd debate which was totally ignored, and the MSM certainly didn’t give him any good press. Anymore than they did Palin.

And, flying back to Texas to help/oversee the wildfires in Texas that had burned almost a year (every county but one) during the first/second debate also didn’t help. He also found time to comfort those that had lost their homes (almost one whole town)……… during the debates.

I am curious to see how Obamacare authorizes HHS to exact new revenues (a.k.a. taxes) from insurers. If the statutory language grants discretion to HHS to decide how much to raise and what it will be spent on, how can there not be a violation of the separation of powers?

We just found out last Friday that our premiums went up by $261 for next year. Exact same plan, exact same family.

visions on December 2, 2012 at 6:01 PM

Be thankful. Ours are going up $120 A MONTH! Haven’t checked yet, but that just so happens to be 1/2 of the $2800 fine for having a non-ObamaTax compliant plan, which is basically every plan in America right now because the govt hasn’t written all the regs. Need to call and ask if our company is eating the other half of the fine.

Bingo. I hear horror stories from Europeans about poorly trained doctors and putrid service. I knew a pre-med student from one European country who did not have to take an exam for at least 2 years that I remember.

The only incentive to achieve doctors will have is if they are concierge or you pay a surcharge for access. A friend of mine from Europe told me his parents pay the equivalent of more than $500 a month just to be eligible for priority scheduling. That’s on top of being taxed to death as pensioners for their lousy health care.

If he hadn’t had the debate debacle – I swear we would be celebrating President elect Perry right now.

UGH!

gophergirl on December 2, 2012 at 8:02 PM

Before he threw his hat in the ring, the writing was on the wall that if he ran for a 4th term in 2014 he probably wouldn’t win a primary. I think he’s a shoo-in now. I slapped a secede sticker on the car the other day. I’d love nothing better than to leave this moocher union.

If he hadn’t had the debate debacle – I swear we would be celebrating President elect Perry right now.

UGH!

gophergirl on December 2, 2012 at 8:02 PM

Before he threw his hat in the ring, the writing was on the wall that if he ran for a 4th term in 2014 he probably wouldn’t win a primary. I think he’s a shoo-in now. I slapped a s_e_c_e_d_e sticker on the car the other day. I’d love nothing better than to leave this moocher union.

When I think
that Justice Roberts could have stopped this fiasco; its enough to make anyone boil over with anger. Justice Roberts who turned out to be as liberal as Ginsberg, Breyer, Sotomayor & Kagan.
I bet Roberts enjoys his VIP insurance plan compliments of the taxpayers he condemned to the monstrosity known as Obamacare.

It almost seems like the administration never expected to have to actually build and activate the entire obamacare mess. It’s as if they never expected it to pass, never expected it to be deemed Constitutional, and only planned on using its failure to point yet another bony finger of blame at the Right for “killing grandma”.

What happens to the Left when it gets its wishes, and has to own the results? I truly never wanted to have to find out, but it looks like another four years of this current disaster is what it will take to wake up enough people to start restoring Liberty.

Another 4 years of this, & then what? By then the hispanic population would have grown much larger, as with the asian & blacks, hence assuring a democratic majority for our lifetimes.
& whom will they get to run against Hillary in ’16? The rino’s coming out of the woodwork: Bush, Christie; bleakness ahead.

Philly, if they could simply be the counterpart to Hillary, it would be a great team, I agree. But going through the wolves, & being torn apart as Romney was by Santorum, Gingrich, Bachmann, & others, knowing they most likely wouldn’t win, greatly damaged Romney. Hillary will waltz in, unchallenged & unscathed.
When Rubio & Martinez are torn apart by their own party, they will already be damaged goods.
Look what the republican party did to poor Allen West, & because of this, there’s yet another liberal in Congress.

Rolling this thing out, the Obama administration is looking like a bunch of chickens running around with their heads cut off, and their unpreparedness in dealing with their own Frankenstein’s monster is showcasing all of the new costs and consequences coming with it.

On the contrary, Obamacare looks like a great fund-raiser … for the government. They’ll tax us to pay for one part of it, then charge the insurance companies a fee to participate, which the insurance companies will then charge their customers. Then they’ll tax medical device manufacturers a tax, slap on extra regulations that the medical device manufacturers will pay for by charging hospitals and doctors more, who will then raise the fees they get from patients.

Of course, Obamacare sets a legal limit to how much an insurance company can spend on overhead not directly related to paying for patient care. But that just requires the insurance companies to send more lobbyists to Washington to change minds. Who pays those lobbyist salaries? Customers, of course.

The people making out like bandits will be the actual bandits, who will be in the government where the big bucks are made.

HHS cannot charge fees under Obamacare. The law is written such that there is a limited overhead for insurance companies and MANDATORY spending of premiums, at 85% written into the bill. There is no wiggle room for this new tax to be passed thru this system.

I suspect that this is nothing more than a lie to try to convince states that have rejected Obamacare implementation to go forward.

Look for the msm to try to use this fraudulent HHS claim as a means to attack those states.

The libs basically gave whoever is the HHS a blank check to write on our behalf when paying for this can of worms arises. Companies are shedding responsibility for providing insurance for current and retired workers. My retiree insurance which I pay a premium for, has now had the prescription portion removed and we will be covered by MC D. I have no idea how much this will cost or if the premium will be deducted from our SS. Couple this insurance mess with higher taxes and the takeover of our 401Ks/IRAs, gives an explanation for Biden’s ‘they gonna put yall back in chains’ comment.

What’s more, there are provisions in the law capping the financial burden the requirements will impose on the uninsured. If costs exceed 8 percent of their income, they are exempt from the individual mandate to buy insurance.

This causes me to wonder if anybody who can’t afford the insurance will be subject to the mandate. Essentially, what we’ll have is: millions of people can’t afford insurance, but we’re not forcing them to enroll anyway. Except their enrollment was supposed to be a revenue stream for the health care law, increasing risk pools and other nonsense Obama spewed like he knew what he was talking about.

So basically, it’s increasing the cost of insurance on everyone else by 20% or whatever, and kick a bunch of people off employer-based coverage into exchanges, to increase net coverage by MAYBE a couple million people. This is even more insidious than I first thought, and my previous opinion of the law was not what you would call high.

As an example, the coverage currently offered by my employer would have cost me over 32% of my annual income, and that before the ~20% increase that goes into effect next year. My total combined withholding – federal, state, local, FICA, all that stuff – is less than 28%. That’s how affordable the new law is making health care for a family of five.

My retiree insurance which I pay a premium for, has now had the prescription portion removed and we will be covered by MC D. I have no idea how much this will cost or if the premium will be deducted from our SS.

“Have fun being on Medicaid. If you don’t want that garbage insurance (which few doctors accept), enjoy paying the monthly bill for your annual costs and redeeming your credits, if any, at tax time. Especially if you have always had insurance from your employer for which you paid a fraction of the costs. And now you pay for a full-coverage family policy out of pocket because it is much, much cheaper for your employer to pay the fine for dropping coverage.

And when the program starts going broke in the first year, have even more fun when subsidies are slashed. Medicare patients, best of luck to you as well. You’ll need it to find a doctor who accepts your insurance (because it pretty much is Medicaid). You’ll have time to adjust, though: The government is reducing Medicare reimbursements to doctors by 27 percent this year, so you may lose your doctor before the nightmare officially starts in 2014.”

Exactly.
Q:Who among us will choose to pile even more volume, at lower rates, onto our schedules?
A: None of us.
Good luck, Obama voters. Perhaps Kath Sibelius can biopsy that nasty looking sore for you, and Eric Holder can outline a course of postoperative therapy.
Or, not. Let’s find out.